


Worlds Enough

by Alinya



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: But really only in hints, Gen, Protective Simmons, Young Deke, very mild references to abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-13
Updated: 2020-09-13
Packaged: 2021-03-07 01:54:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,926
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26448877
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alinya/pseuds/Alinya
Summary: It was late when Daisy said it, ‘I need you,’ in the flickering light of a real log fire. And just like that, like the snapping of fingers or clicking of heels, Jemma was in it againIn which a mission to another world proves more complicated than anyone anticipated.
Relationships: Deke Shaw & Jemma Simmons, Jemma Simmons & Skye | Daisy Johnson
Comments: 2
Kudos: 11





	Worlds Enough

**Author's Note:**

> I've had a few requests for protective Simmons and a Deke that doesn't know her. Consider this my attempt to meet the prompt. Of course, I planned to give you a couple thousand words and have done, but the narrative just ran and ran. So hopefully it meets expectations.

It was late when Daisy said it, ‘I need you,’ in the flickering light of a real log fire. And just like that, like the snapping of fingers or clicking of heels, Jemma was in it again. Overhead came the gently galumphing sounds of too many devoted adults attempting the bedtime routine. Jemma listened for a moment, hunched her shoulders, and setting her mug atop a coaster ( _Deke Squad!_ in teal _,_ vintage the 1980s on repeat) said, ‘What can I do?’

‘That’s it?’ said Daisy, incredulous as overhead came the sounds of what could only be the raising of the dead. ‘That’s _all_? You don’t even know what I’m going to say. I might be asking you to rob a bank.’

Jemma shrugged. ‘Bad Girl Shenanigans were always my specialty,’ she said. ‘If you wanted to rob a bank you’d ask Kora. We both know it. And anyway, you’re going to tell me. You always do.’

Daisy did tell her, too. To the sound of what was probably Deke summersaulting off of his bed and Alya’s maternal exasperation at the collective incompetence of so many interlopers, Daisy talked parallel worlds and trans-dimensional bridges, and how, ‘Obviously, the director wants data. Soil samples and atmosphere and all that boring stuff – ’

‘Oy!’ said Jemma, half-indignant, half-playful. She swatted with positive felininity at Daisy’s shoulder.

‘The stuff you love,’ Daisy amended. ‘The stuff you’re good at.’

‘Of course,’ said Jemma, mind darting to the things she would need. ‘Anything.

‘There’s a catch,’ said Daisy. She began to pick fretfully at the tassel on a cushion courtesy of Fitz’s mum. Jemma inhaled through her nose, thought the little Perthshire sitting room smelled of anxiety and fire. Then she wondered obliquely when it was they had advanced enough into mundane life that she took the luxury of a sitting room for granted.

‘You need me to go with you,’ said Jemma. ‘Don’t you?’

Daisy said, ‘It’s too much, I know. You’re retired. I should never have asked. I can find another biochemist – ’

‘Not better than me you can’t,’ said Jemma. ‘And don’t you dare. It’s been too long, anyway. I wouldn’t miss this for worlds. Literally.’ 

They began to laugh, and the dog that had heretofore been sleeping by the fire began to stir. He padded lazily towards them and stuck his nose in Jemma’ cooling tea.

‘I hate that it has to be now,’ said Daisy. ‘That it’s taking you away from Deke.’

‘There will be other visits,’ Jemma said. ‘I can’t believe it took you this long to figure out a way to cross over.’

‘Well, our best brains had retired into obscurity, so – ow!’ This as Jemma swatted at her again. More seriously Daisy said, ‘You’re sure you don’t mind?’

Jemma shook her head. ‘It gives Fitz and I an excuse to visit you. A reason that doesn’t involve the apparent fluidity of the cosmos, I mean. We should have gone last spring but then that appointment for Fitz came through and we really couldn’t not go, and it just…’

‘Yeah, yeah,’ Daisy said, waving a hand. ‘Excuses, excuses. You’re always making them.’ She grinned an eyewateringly bright grin, all teeth and charisma that no amount of time had yet managed to dim. ‘Personally,’ Daisy said now, ‘the bone I have to pick is with the young Miss that _moved continents_ on you.’

‘You’ve remembered she moved to your continent, yeah?’ said Jemma, and just like that they were laughing again. It came with a pang, because even after all that time listening to her mother talk about how you let your children go for love of them, Jemma hadn’t really thought it would apply. Hadn’t thought she and Fitz would have to do it, because this was the thing they had fought for, this Scottish idyll with its strawberry farm excursions, dogs and mundanity. The three o’clock winter light and the long, lugubrious summer twilights. But it had, of course it had, because there had come a morning when Alya had twisted her mug of tea fretfully between her fingers and said was it all right, would they mind terribly, this job that had come up , she couldn’t possibly do anything else. And of course they had relented because that, too was what they had fought for. And because after the genteel horror of Deke’s father they thought Alya had probably earned the respite. So it had meant America and a transatlantic move. Well, hadn’t they done the same once?

Now Jemma dimpled at Daisy, the pang of the move passed and said, ‘ America – and on her auntie’s say-so no less.’

‘Oh, I remember,’ said Daisy. ‘And that was all Yoyo. I swear by…uh…something really important anyway…that I had no hand in that.’

‘What’s this?’ said a voice from the doorway, making them jump. That was how it dawned on Jemma that they had been laughing and skitting each other too much to register that the galumphing elephants overhead have died to a nothingness.

Daisy, usually so glib in her cover-ups floundered wildly. It was comical to watch.

‘I was just asking Jemma about, er…cuttlefish!’ she said, desperate. ‘And um… cromataforms?’

‘Chromatophores,’ said Fitz and Jemma together. ‘Which,’ said Fitz, holding up his index finger, ‘is interesting, because I was pretty sure you were recruiting Jemma for another one of your missions.’

Jemma was never sure afterwards whose eyes went widest, but she was tolerably sure it was Daisy.

‘You _knew_ about that?’ she said.

‘Known for years,’ said Fitz, and shrugged. ‘Jemma was always going to retire the day after never, which, let’s face it, has an exasperating habit of coming too bloody close too often and never actually arriving. And she never could tell a lie for toffee. What’s it this time?’

‘Classified,’ said Daisy and pulled a face worthy of a younger Alya at him. Mentally, Jemma applauded the effort. Fitz pulled one right back, and Jemma caught the eye of Agent Sousa across the room.

‘Our normal always was slightly askew,’ she offered, resuming her tea. He shook his head, much to say _Don’t I know it_ , and dropped into the chair nearest the dying fire. Daisy’s anxiety had long-since ebbed leaving only the smell of wood-smoke, cedar logs and camomile tea behind. The dog munched idly on a dropped handkerchief (Jemma suspected it was Sousa's and would be missed) and talk shifted to the children. Enoch’s job in Stirling; they were going to offer him a chair at the university. Deke had heard and said, all concerned, ‘Doesn’t Uncle Enoch have a chair already? Where does he sit, Nana?’

They laughed over it in the privacy of the sitting room as they hadn’t been able to with Deke present, his feelings raw bundles of young nerves and self-importance.

‘Tell him I’m sorry to miss him,’ Jemma said and Fitz nodded.

‘Just come back safe, yeah?’ he said and there was a ghost there, an echo of another place, and another time, when he had been the one hopping not worlds but merely planets.

_How far we’ve come_ , thought Jemma as the fire guttered and the dog fell asleep with his nose on Fitz’s knee. Alya padded into the room, Kora on her heels, bearing a tray of late-night sustenance between them. Digestives and cocoa. Lovely. An Alya specialty.

‘You lot are awfully cosy,’ she said, and it was comforting somehow, Jemma thought, to know that even after all this time abroad her daughter still sounded like herself. Deke might have picked up an accent, and Fitz might well grumble, but then, Jemma thought, he wouldn’t really have been _Deke_ without it, so that was all right. Funny how these things worked themselves out.

‘Little sister fill you in?’ Kora asked her, and then, when Sousa twitched gently, ‘Oh! I mean – ’

Alya laughed. She said, ‘Oh, I’ve known forever about Mum helping you with missions.’

Then, to a room of incredulous exclamations, she said, ‘Honestly! Have you ever seen her lie? I mean, convincingly? I came down to ask for a mug of cocoa and found our kitchen table covered in this stuff that was _clearly_ not intended for the Oxbridge colleague she said it was for. It was straight out of Lovecraft.’

‘That is…not an inaccurate description,’ said Sousa.

‘Years in space,’ Daisy said, ‘and he’s _still_ not used to the whole Aliens thing.’

Jemma smiled. ‘Mundanity’s overrated anyway,’ she said.

But not so overrated that she didn’t linger over a sleeping Deke to administer a goodnight kiss or two. One for now, and one for later. For safekeeping. She tried to do the same with Alya, but her daughter, stood on the second storey landing only rolled her eyes soundly by sunrise and said ‘Mum! You’re not supposed to be the soppy one!’

So they half-hugged instead, and parted laughing, Jemma content instead to cherish the smell of her daughter’s hair, citrus and sunlight, as it had always been. Fitz was heard to observe that any disdain for soppiness was entirely a maternal inheritance and Jemma really couldn’t complain. Of course mother and daughter denied it, and then they all laughed over it. Then the dog tripped Jemma up on the third stair from the bottom, which jarred the knee The Doctor had once shot, and oh, mundanity was overrated but it had its good points too.

‘I’ll miss you,’ Jemma said as she hovered on the stoop of the house. She wanted to savour this parting image of them, Fitz and Alya in the doorway, little Deke asleep upstairs, the way the sun splashed pinkly through the windows and spilled wine-colours across the floor. It made the clutter of wellies, shoes, dog leads and harnesses almost lovely, in a funny sort of way.

‘Come back safe,’ said Fitz, and Jemma promised, because that was what they did.

‘I always do,’ she said and meant it, because that too was part of what they did.

* * *

The Zephyr was on its nth iteration by then, but the layout was the same. Fitz’s design had held up. The doors were sleeker, the S.H.I.E.L.D. logo that bit different, and the plaque proclaiming the crew _Astro Ambassadors_ over control was presumably all Daniel Sousa – or else all Daisy because of him – but the bones, the essentials were the same. Someone – and this was unquestionably Daisy – had even remembered which particular station in the lab Jemma was preferential to and set it up for her. Someone else – almost certainly Agent Sousa because he was particular about these things – had taken care that the plaque proclaiming it her station got her title right.

‘Not that we’re planning to spend much time here,’ said Daisy. ‘Think you remember how to operate in the field?’

Jemma scoffed. ‘Not likely to forget, am I?’ she said.

There flashed briefly through her mind’s eye a kaleidoscope of just why this should be so; Daisy – she’d been Skye then – bleeding to certain death in Italy, the vast, snowy wilderness of Canada, Fitz at the bottom of that bloody ocean and the weeks that had followed, Trip, the temple, a screaming Strucker…on and on it went. But what was it she had said the other night? _Mundanity was overrated_. Well, it was. And the ride, Bobbi Morse might have liked to know, had been more than worth it.

That was how they came to all be standing on the bridge of the Zephyr while Daisy outlined their plan for crossing universes. Simultaneously Agents Gresham and Davidman talked over one another in a bid to explain the physics of the quantum gizmo that would get them where they were going. Davidman said something about how it involved disintegration and reintegration on _the other side_. This last, Jemma thought, sounded less like a highly classified mission to another world and more like her mother when she spoke in dismay of an acquaintance that had finally made the jump from garden-variety High Church Anglican to Catholic.

( _And what_ , said a bemused Fitz in her memory, _is the difference?_

To which an equally ghostly Jemma had been heard to hazard without much conviction, _The Anglicans don’t have the Pope?_

But they had said all this after the fact, her mother safely departed to The Wednesday Club, a group of women of indeterminate function but with an obvious predilection for tea and gossip.)

In the present, Agent Sousa was looking veritably green.

‘Forgive me,’ he said with a deferential touch of Jemma’ elbow, ‘if I misunderstand, but is he saying that we will disintegrate?’

‘At an atomic level,’ said Jemma. ‘And only briefly. Though, obviously, if we encounter any turbulence or the machine malfunctions it’s entirely possible we may suffer irreparable…’ she stopped, perforce at the sight of the older man’s face.

‘Which is of course, extremely unlikely and not something you should concern yourself with, isn’t that right, Agent Davidman? Agent Gresham?’ For emphasis Jemma beamed her most seraphic smile at Agent Sousa. Davidman made appropriate noises of agreement. Gresham looked at best unconvinced. Neither of these things appeared to work.

‘Your family were right,’ he said. ‘You tell a terrible lie. No disrespect intended.’

Jemma laughed and patted his shoulder.

‘No, really,’ said Jemma, ‘I’m sure it will be fine. I’m hope. Always have been. For handwringing, you want Fitz.’

‘Of course it will work,’ said Davidman stoutly. ‘Did you think we’d send you out there without protection?’

Some of the colour that had previously drained from Sousa’s face returned, but only some.

‘Right,’ said Gresham. ‘Like Agent Simmons says there’s a chance – only a chance! – your disintegration will scatter your atoms across an unmeasurable field. Well unmeasurable from this side. So we designed this.’

He snapped something onto Jemma’s unsuspecting wrist. Something looked suspiciously like a watch. The colour drained from Sousa again, if possible worse than previously.

‘It should set a perimeter on the atomic scatter and help with reintegration. And for an encore, we’ll send you the coordinates of where to rendez-vous when we’re ready to reconvene.’

‘Clever,’ said Jemma. Sousa said nothing. Possibly because even now Davidman was calculating something called catastrophe probability, which did, admittedly sound alarming when uttered aloud.

Then the machine – D.R.E.A.M.S., Davidman had called it, short for Disintegration Reintegration Electronic Atomic Multiverse System– whirred to life. Lights flickered and systems thrummed into operation. Something knocked out the Zephyr’s main lighting system so that everything glowed an eerie red. This was, said Gresham, entirely normal. He said it with terrific conviction, for which Jemma gave him top marks. Davidman was in the middle of explaining that he and Gresham would stay behind to run back-end and advising they brace for the unexpected because even the littlest things caused massive fallout in the way a world unfolded, when Daisy stepped into the machine. Jemma blinked, and that was that. Daisy was gone.

‘Right,’ she said, towing Agent Sousa with her. ‘Here goes nothing. Then, because he looked bloody terrified, she said in her best impression of Margot Channing by way of Bette Davis, which was nothing to write home about but used to make the children laugh, ‘Fasten your seatbelts, it’s going to be a bumpy ride.’

Retrospectively it was probably not the cleverest choice of quote. Sousa went from green to white to puce. But at least he recognised it. In fact, he was halfway through telling her he understood the reference when they rucked up in…Well, it wasn’t the Zephyr, anyway. Probably it was where the Zephyr would have been had this universe had a Zephyr – or if it had one operating the same mission. That it didn’t or wasn’t was probably just as well, because Jemma felt entirely too dizzy and disorientated to grapple with the problem of confronting an alternate crew. _Is that how it works? And would they be us?_ She wondered. And then, almost instinctually, _I wish Fitz were here. He’d have the answers._

‘You two okay?’ said Daisy from half a pace away. She was sitting down, Jemma couldn’t help but notice, hands braced against her knees. But she looked complete, anyway. Jemma counted four limbs, one head, two ears, eyes both operational, and all visible orifices open that should be, so that was all to the good. Pulse a bit fast maybe, but that was probably to be expected post trans-universe commute. She began to take stock of herself and Sousa, even as she answered reflexively, ‘Fine. Absolutely fine.’

‘Good,’ said Daisy and nodded approval.

Jemma released Sousa, and as she had years ago, jumped experimentally up and down. Gravity the same then. She took a deep breath. Atmosphere good. Air cool and crisp as it was wont to be in autumn, maybe a tang of mulch in the smell of it. And smoke. Fire? Was something on fire? Had their cross-cosmic jump ruptured something, caused an engine to combust, the effect of which was being felt…Ah. Jemma looked across the landscape and recognised the Leuchars air base. They had made the trip from here on the basis that Daisy had an ongoing permit to land the Zephyr with them and they would know where they were on arrival. Or so Davidman had theorised when he explained the nuances of disintegration and reintegration. Gresham had been doubtful, but Jemma was starting to realise that was the shape and contour of their partnership.

_You’re crossing worlds_ , Davidman had said, _but not space. So in theory, wherever we are now is where you will be when you get There_. He had said it just like that. You could hear the capital letter.

_Right_ , Jemma thought, registering this. _So they’re burning the fields. Makes sense._ That was as far as she got before Kora came through. She stumbled and reeled across the ground, before dropping down next to Daisy.

‘It looks the same,’ she said, surprised. ‘The way Davidman was talking, I was half expecting green skies and blue grass.’

‘Yeah,’ said Daisy. ‘I know what you mean.’

Sousa, bless him, said, ‘So no one else wants to take a minute to process that we’re not where we were mere seconds ago?’

Daisy and Kora shrugged. Jemma scrubbed at the back of her neck with one hand. ‘That’s the science,’ she said, and smiled. Then, because she couldn’t resist, ‘I told you it would be fine.’

‘Sure,’ he said, ‘but it’s true now.’

* * *

They went first, as per mission directive, to the library, because as long as they were in strange lands it wouldn’t hurt to know the background. Jemma set up outside, sketching fauna and when she judged herself unnoticed, taking soil samples. This was how they found out that the botany was unremarkably the same as back home, but the Crimean War had gone on almost 50 years longer than it should have (‘Which one is that?’ Daisy had wanted to know) and the Cold War had been escalated because of some ducks in the St James Park.

(‘But not _really_ , right?’ Kora said. Even Sousa had looked doubtful.

‘Well,’ said Jemma, dredging up years-old year 12 history, ‘I think that really _was_ an issue, because the Russian ducks kept dying, or something. But we smoothed it over.’

And Sousa, looking beyond incredulous, had said, ‘Clearly they didn’t.’ )

Nixon had not gone to China, so that was an idiom no one would know, a linguistic quirk that was probably the least of their problems, as the economy was now radically different. Possibly this had contributed to the miners’ strike being if possible worse than Jemma’s family had remembered it, but it was difficult to be sure. The patter noster lift had, against all odds, survived as the lift of choice, and Scotland had, it turned out, separated, which had inspired Quebec to do likewise across the pond, and at this point the whole exercise began to do Jemma’s head in.

‘Really?’ said Daisy. ‘ _That’s_ your sticking point? Lifts and Canadian politics? Have you even _been_ back to Canada since…’ Here she gestured indeterminately across the library steps in a motion that somehow encompassed the treachery of Ward, the murder of Agent Koenig and the biting cold of Providence.

In fact, Jemma had (twice, even, once because a Green Gables-mad Alya had demanded a Maritimes holiday, and then again to help bury Melinda May’s mother) but she never got to elaborate. There was a frantic scramble by the local population to scatter, so that the library steps were suddenly vacant, bar the four of them. There was the steady and unrelenting stomp of militarised people in motion and the back of Jemma's neck prickled. In the looming shadow of the massing uniforms the abandoned library steps looked sad and grubby, neglected even.

The massed people in black tramped ever closer, and why they couldn’t just walk like anyone else was one of those great, unanswerable questions. Jemma thought with a pang of Deke’s everlasting _I want to know!_ when confronted with one of life’s inexplicabilities and tamped it down.

‘You history books,’ said Jemma in a whisper, ‘they didn’t happen to say which secret organisation got run of the world and choice in acronyms? Because last time it was the bad guys, and they always get better funding. And that,’ gesturing at the arms the agents carried, ‘looks worrisomely like I.C.E.R. tech.’

Daisy wasn’t waiting to find out. In what was almost one gesture she had thrown Jemma behind her and shot an arm out in front of them. There was a terrific rattle as the foundations of the library shook, but it was the massed troops that went flying. Well, the front row did, but Jemma wasn’t fussy. By then Kora had joined her sister, and it occurred to Jemma that she never had seen them together, not like this. Energy ricocheted off the vibrational manipulations Daisy spun in what could, under different circumstances, have been a light show. Almost it was mesmeric. Primarily it was terrifying to the opposition. Buildings juttered and roots disengaged from the ground. There was screaming and cursing and general chaos. Mundanity might not, on reflection, be so overrated after all.

Jemma was scrabbling for her own I.C.E.R. when Sousa said, ‘I think they’ve got our logo, you know. Or a version of it.’

They had; Jemma remembered it, because it was the eagle of the _Iliad Star_ , the one Gonzales had so fleetingly flown at headquarters. But if that were so, that meant he had won the bid for leadership and that probably Afterlife was…

‘Daisy!’ said Jemma. ‘Daisy, Kora _stand down!’_

‘They’re trying to capture us!’ said Daisy.

‘Yes,’ Jemma said, ‘but Daisy, your powers – they’ll kill you for them!’

The alarmed look on Agent Sousa’s face escalated several notches at this but Jemma couldn’t help that.

‘And Daisy, if Gonzales or whoever took over has _me_ on side – ’

The last of their assailants went flying, and landed, Jemma couldn’t help but notice, in decidedly unnatural positions. Well, that was what came of unsettling Quake mid-fight, Jemma thought. But really, the stakes had made it necessary.

‘Gonzales?’ said Daisy. To Kora’s blank incomprehension she elaborated, ‘But my mother killed him.’

‘Over he- there? Back home,’ said Jemma. Really, it was linguistically impossible to make this make sense. Daisy was right; lift choices and Canadian provinces were the least of it. She scrubbed at the back of her neck., frustrated.

‘That’s his S.H.I.E.L.D., Daisy. You went straight on to Afterlife, so it wouldn’t have stuck, but Fitz and I saw it all the time after he took the base. His attitude to Inhumans, it wasn’t…’

‘He wanted to kill us,’ said Daisy. ‘That I do remember. Okay. So. We can’t stay here.’ She motioned at the prone agents with their askew limbs.

‘Agreed,’ said Sousa. There followed one of those taut, terse silences in which it emerged that the plan had probably fallen to pieces but no one wanted to be the first to say so. The air prickled with unease and distant smoke.

‘The thing is,’ said Kora, ‘until what I’m pretty sure was seconds ago, the plan was to rendez-vous with you…er with _other you_ …and broach the science and maybe the um…’

‘The possibility of working together,’ said Sousa. He looked relieved to finally have an answer to a problem.

Jemma looked at Daisy to confirm that this was, in fact, how it worked.

‘Right,’ said Jemma. ‘Now this really _is_ doing my head in. Is that even safe?’

‘We thought it was,’ said Daisy. ‘I mean, it’s not like this is the latest _Harry Potter_ instalment. We aren’t time-travelling, we’re world-travelling. So prior to the Evil S.H.I.E.L.D., or Real S.H.I.E.L.D., or whatever they’ve called themselves this round, yeah. We thought we’d meet up with you.’ 

‘And that’s no longer advisable,’ said Sousa.

Jemma hummed, suddenly thoughtful. ‘But look, Daisy, when I was – I never wanted to kill _you_. Raina killed my team in front of me, and I was terrified, so all that afterwards about – ’

‘I know,’ said Daisy, and patted her shoulder reassuringly. 'Water under the bridge, Simmons.'

‘No,’ said Jemma. ‘What I mean is, provided we’re alike, me and…Other Me…you could talk her round. You and Fitz always could.’ 

Daisy smiled. The terseness of seconds ago began to unravel. Jemma allowed herself to breathe as she checked her I.C.E.R. She even reflexively took stock of the fallen agents, force of habit.

‘So we head for Perth,’ said Sousa. ‘If you still think that’s our best option?’

The fact of it was that Jemma had no idea. They were stranded in a strange place awaiting the co-ordinates from Davidman to indicate where they would have to reconvene for the return trip. In the meantime they were facing a radically different history, with local politics and nuances they had yet to parse, dependent on of all things the Stagecoach Bus service, because now Sousa was saying ‘Some guy named Beaching sliced up all the train lines as far as Aberdeen. How much of a difference do you think that will make?’

‘Oh bloody hell,’ said Jemma.

* * *

There had once been – indeed, there still was a universe away – something called the Fife Circle that would normally have allowed them to take the train to Ladybank and change trains for Perth. It was irritating in the original instance because it was not the kind of distance that justified the change of trains. It was irritating in this instance by virtue of its nonexistence. So they went via the bus terminus in St Andrews to Perth while Jemma mentally composed a letter of vexation to Stagecoach for the fact that in no universe were they reliable, on time, or even remotely efficient.

But it got them to Perth, which was the main thing, and once there the navigating was a matter of autopilot. Not for the first time Daisy remarked that she didn’t know how Jemma did it, so of course that was when they got their first clue something was wrong. It was a little thing. Nothing even. The house opposite theirs had had the door painted dove grey, where it had always been black in Jemma memory. But Davidman had said to expect changes, and if paint colour was the least of it…There were toys on her lawn. Well, on what would have been her and Fitz’s lawn had they lived over here, which they didn’t.

‘Deke must be visiting you, too,’ said Kora, but that wasn’t it. Jemma knew that wasn’t it on a bone deep level because the toys were wrong. Too new-looking. These weren’t relics of her own children’s childhoods, they were evidence of an ongoing one. _Maybe we sold the house,_ Jemma thought, but that felt gutturally wrong, too. They loved that house. All of them. Alya and Auntie Melinda had practically ordered them to keep the thing in perpetuity.

‘How do you want to play this?’ asked Daisy, as they stood looking at the detritus of ongoing play, drifting football, idle red wagon, an alarming plastic contraption that Jemma could only suppose existed to trip up the unsuspecting parent. _Deke would love it,_ she thought, and that was the first thing she felt to be right.

‘Let me,’ she said, and picked her way with practiced carefulness through the slew of toys and gardening equipment to knock on the door.

* * *

It was all the same. The same spread-winged eagle knocker, the same long-broken bell. The same tangle of wellies and boots and tatty doormat past the threshold. There were children’s drawings in the windows though, and so it wasn’t really a surprise when the door swung open to the sound of Alya’s voice – that funny hybrid of Scottish burred Rs, dropped dentals and Received Pronunciation – said ‘Mum?’

It wasn’t a surprise but even so, Jemma stood there perplexed for fractionally too long. ‘Mum?’ said Alya again, and pulled her into a hug. Jemma inhaled citrus and sun, and thought with relief that there were constants that crossed worlds. ‘Is Dad with you? We weren’t expecting you! You should have said!’

Then, because Jemma still hadn’t spoken, Alya stepped back and said, ‘Is something wrong? Has someone – ’

‘We moved away,’ said Jemma, more to herself than the woman in front of her. Involuntarily she reached out to brush Alya’s hair behind her ears. It was soft and silky as it had been yesterday when they’d said their goodbyes.

‘You stayed in Scotland and we moved – ’ It seemed unreal.

Alya was frowning at her. ‘Well yeah,’ she said. ‘Ages ago. Mum, are you all right?’

Dimly, Jemma was aware of the others waiting on her. She was acutely aware that they only had so much time and what they had was of the essence. She was trying to formulate an answer; yes, she was fine, no she was not Alya’s mother (though probably she was, on a biological level, if she were to run the DNA), and formulating a user-friendly guide to explain the world-hopping expedition this was when a veritable whirlwind ran at and seized upon Alya’s leg.

The whirlwind was all limbs and massy, curly dark hair, and he sounded so positively Scottish that for a moment Jemma’s eyes misgave her, because Deke sounded – had always sounded – American. _Fitz would be thrilled_ , she thought dazedly. Then, immediately, _Fitz would never recognise him._

‘Mummy,’ he said, sounding not at all like the boy Jemma knew, ‘you’ve been gone ever so long.’

‘Deke!’ said Jemma, in spite of herself, and dropping down to his level. ‘Sweetheart, I haven’t seen you in ages!’ She hoped it was true in this world too. Very probably, she thought, if she and Fitz really _had_ returned to America.

( _And why_ , she wondered, _did we do that? S.H.I.E.L.D.? Daisy? Coulson? Did something terrible happen?_ )

She put out her hand to touch his childishly round cheeks and he reeled backwards, alarmed.

‘Deke,’ she said soothingly, ‘it’s Nana.’

Alya smiled Fitz’s apologetic smile at her and said, ‘He’s always been terrible with strangers. Gets it from his dad, probably, don’t you, Monkey?’ and she swung Deke up into her arms. _Or because of him_ flashed across Alya's face, but Jemma would have surmised as much anyway. And she had so hoped that _that_ had changed, at least.

‘I suppose he wouldn’t remember,’ said Jemma, improvising wildly.

‘No,’ said Alya. ‘I don’t think so. You’ve had such a hard time getting away, I know. And – ’ here Alya squinted over Jemma’ shoulder, ‘you’ve got people with you, haven’t you? Is this a business visit?’

_People?_ Thought Jemma. _Surely she knows_ …but then, perhaps not. God alone knows what had happened to the Inhumans over here. To Daisy and Yoyo and the others. Jemma wasn’t angling to find out, but thought she had better. But not like this. Not standing on the doorstep to her would-be daughter’s home with a frightened Deke half-buried in his mother’s arms.

And Alya had offered her the opening she needed. ‘Look,’ she said, ‘we’d better come in, do you mind?’

* * *

Seated in the sitting room, now sans dog and with the fireplace converted to gas, Jemma dispensed with introductions and dove into the heart of it. There didn’t seem to be another way. So as Alya handed round mugs of tea (still Yorkshire, Jemma noticed, twisting the string of the bag between her fingers), she said, ‘I’m afraid this is going to sound a bit surreal.’

‘Doesn’t it always?’ said Alya, which made them laugh. It made Deke dive into the pillow fort he had amassed against the side of the sofa, and the part of Jemma’ brain running off-mission couldn’t help but wonder what made him so jumpy.

_If someone has hurt him,_ she thought, and then refocused her attention to hear Daisy stumbling through an explanation of who they were.

Daisy talked and the frown between Alya’s eyes deepened. ‘You’re not from here?’ she said.

‘I did say it would sound surreal,’ said Jemma.

‘Yeah,’ said Alya, ‘but surreal is you and Dad adventuring on another planet. You’re saying you aren’t from this one.’

Daisy ran her hands over her face. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Same planet. Different version of it. Like…like…Simmons, help me here.’

‘Like looking in a mirror,’ said Jemma. ‘The same but sort of backwards.’

‘Like you living in America?’ said Alya, who had always been terrifyingly clever.

Jemma nodded. She said ‘Over – where we came from, Fitz and I stayed, and you moved with Deke.’

Hearing his name, Deke poked his head out of his fort. ‘I was in Wonderland?’ he asked. It left Jemma with the disconcerting impression that her grandson – not for the first time – had a better read on the situation than most adults.

(It was Deke, in her world, who had said fretfully in the beginning, ‘Nana, why does Daddy shout so much? Bobo never shouts.’ He hadn’t meant to trip any particular wire; he had only been asking, as was the Fitzsimmons wont, for an answer. )

‘That’s right, sweetheart,’ said Jemma. She took a rich tea biscuit from the plate Alya had set out and offered it to him, only half wondering what ripple had converted Alya from digestives to their inferior culinary cousin.

‘And I’ve missed you lots and lots, because you live very far away.’

Deke took the biscuit warily and munched on it. Once, in such a mood, Jemma had lifted him onto her knee and smoothed his hair and suffered herself to be accused of soppiness. But _He’s not good with strangers,_ Alya had said, so she only smiled at him and handed over another biscuit.

‘Then,’ said Deke, mouth full of biscuit, ‘in Wonderland, you and Bobo love me?’

‘To the stars and back,’ said Jemma. Deke munched his biscuit. Swallowed. He said, ‘I don’t think Nana and Bobo _here_ can love me much, because they left.’

‘Oh – ’ began Jemma, aware she was supposed to be liaising with a contact but finding this emotional quandary to be vastly more important. She got no further, because Deke hadn’t finished.

‘I _know_ ,’ he said in a voice too young to sound that decisive, ‘because Daddy didn’t love us either, and he left.’

‘Oh, _sweetheart_ ,’ said Jemma and had half reached for him before she remembered about his dislike of hugs from strangers. The trouble was that biscuits didn’t seem to do this crisis justice.

More urgently, though, the problem appeared to be that S.H.I.E.L.D. of this world had caught up with them.

‘Sorry,’ said Daisy, ‘we were just getting to the part about how they probably want to kill us for appearing from who-knows-where to set who-knows-what probably Maccheovellian plan in motion.’ 

Alya grimaced. Deke’s eyes went wide as saucers.

‘Nana,’ he said, ‘what’s macky-o-vellen?’And he looked at her with that same fierely earnest belief that Deke – her Deke from before the time travel, partner, peer, family – had used to give her in the midst of a crisis.

‘It’s a very elaborate plan that doesn’t make very much sense,’ said Jemma even as the team from S.H.I.E.L.D. began to batter on the door. Alya got up, resignedly.

‘There are tunnels,’ she said, ‘under the kitchen. You had them put in when we were kids in case something happened. If your friends,’ here she nodded to Daisy and Kora, ‘aren’t safe here, you’d better head for them. I’ll handle the rest.’

‘Right,’ said Jemma. ‘Come on.’ She motioned the others after her, and almost instinctually bent down to Deke. ‘What do you think?’ she said. ‘Will we play hide and seek together as part of the plan that makes no sense?’

He stuck short, stubby arms up and suffered himself to be scooped into her arms. ‘Okay, Nana,’ he said.

Behind her Jemma could hear Alya at the door. ‘Yes, my mother. She’s visiting with family from America…no you don’t know them…’

* * *

‘I have to ask,’ said Daisy as they went, ‘Are there really tunnels back at, you know, your place?’

Jemma shifted Deke’s weight in her arms and huffed a breath. ‘Old habits die hard,’ she said. It had been tricky navigating the descending ladder with Deke in her arms, but it was even harder to walk with him. The tunnels, which had ever been musty and dark at best, got narrower as she went along so that it increasingly became necessary to walk bent double, Deke squashed against her chest. It was not at all like an Agatha Christie novel. On the other hand, when they came up into a nearby meadow to be confronted by yet more S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, it was probably for the best that all Deke could see was the fabric of her tack gear.

‘Nana,’ said Deke, ‘is hide and seek over?’

‘Soon,’ said Jemma, one hand scrabbling for her I.C.E.R. in case it should prove necessary. ‘Promise, sweetheart. Then we’ll go back to Mummy and beg biscuits.’

‘Digestives?’ asked Deke hopefully, and it was all Jemma could do not to laugh.

‘They’re nicer, aren’t they?’ she asked conspiratorially, and in that way, got them behind a linden tree and out of the firing line without Deke noticing.

_I will protect you or die trying_ , she thought, _but I will never be able to look your mother in the eye if you have to see me do it._And besides, Daisy had them covered. She could tell because the grass shivered and the ground trembled and occasionally Kora's power caused something to incinerate so that the pungent smell of burning assaulted them. None of it was meant for child consumption. So while Daisy, Kora and Sousa dealt with the irate S.H.I.E.L.D. team, him on communications and liaising, them on offence, Nana and Deke sat in the shade of a linden tree and she kept him distracted with stories of the stars. She told him about how once she had crossed space for Bobo, and how later they had travelled into the past so his mum would be safe.

‘Wonderland sounds ‘citing,’ he said, his voice muffled against her chest.

‘Yeah,’ Jemma said. ‘Yeah it is. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.’

‘Even if you miss me lots?’

Jemma smoothed his hair and was surprised to hear the shiver and rattle of Daisy’s quake give way to birdsong.

‘I know you’re happy,’ she said. She risked a glance across the meadow and saw Sousa had cornered and was now in convoluted conversation with someone. Daisy stuck her arm upwards and called them an all-clear.

‘Did we win?’ Deke asked her, and Daisy laughed.

‘Oh yeah,’ she said, ‘We won. Though I can’t imagine Mack will be thrilled by the noise we made.’

Deke’s face broke into a grin so dazzling it blocked out entirely whatever else Daisy was saying about the success of the mission and Sousa getting through to the other side, and how incidentally, did they radio for extract. Jemma shook her head. If they had to wait out the remainder of the mission in Perth with Alya and this iteration of Deke…well, there were worse outcomes.

She was almost sorry when the co-ordinates came through. The watches Davidman and Gresham had been so proud of pinged to life, and a startled Deke spilled orange squash across the carpet. His eyes welled to hear they were leaving, and perhaps that was the hardest wrench of all, because it seemed to Jemma that she was forever saying goodbye to him. In the 80s, at the airport, and now here, in a universe she didn’t belong to. She kissed him twice, ‘Once for now,’ she said, ‘and one more for later. For safekeeping.’

Then they were at the rendezvous and the world shimmered. Jemma blinked and Daisy was gone, Kora behind her and Sousa on their heels. She lingered only a moment determined that there should be next times, that she know this Deke was as safe and happy as hers had ever been. There would be other missions, after all. Bound to be. BAnd really, Daisy would need her. Jemma dared any universe to say otherwise. 


End file.
